With Halloween in the books, it seems the holiday season is officially underway!  The kids woke up on November 1 and asked if it was Christmas yet.  (Nope.)  I don’t like to rush through life, and especially not through the holidays, so clearly I need to recap Halloween here before we can move on to Thanksgiving, let alone Christmas.

Our Halloween festivities kicked off on the Sunday before the holiday.  In other years I might have tried to do something in the run-up to the day itself, but between job transitions and general life stuff, pumpkin picking and carving was all I had the energy to do before Halloween.  That was plenty for the kids, though.  We talked about driving up to Maryland and checking out the festivities at Butler’s Orchard, but ultimately decided to stick with the more low-key Wegmeyer Farms in Loudoun County, Virginia.  We got our pumpkins there and loved the relaxed atmosphere and rolling fields.

Also, let’s not pretend the kids didn’t come for the wagon ride.

Although it was late in the season, there were plenty of beautiful pumpkins (and other squash) in the fields, and we had a lot of choices.

Some people wanted the biggest pumpkins they could find.  (Maybe next year I need to institute a new rule: you want it, you have to lift it.)

 

Decisions were made eventually.

We loaded the pumpkins up – one for Peanut, one for Nugget, and one for Mommy and Daddy to share – into the wagon and dragged them back up the hill.

Before we could pay for our pumpkins and leave the pumpkin patch, there was one other important item of business to which we had to attend.

APPLE CIDER DONUTS.  ‘Tis the season!

From the pumpkin patch, we made a detour to a nearby nature sanctuary for a picnic and hiking, but when we got home there was only one thing on the agenda:

Carving!  The kids were not content to festoon their pumpkins with stickers this year – I guess my years of phoning in the Halloween decorating are over.  We now have three happy jack-o-lanterns on our front porch, and the squirrels have been eating their faces with gusto.

Anyway!  Halloween morning dawned clear and pretty warm.  (These southern kids have it made, by the way.  I remember many a Halloween of covering up my carefully chosen costume with a parka.  There is never any need for battles about wearing coats over their costumes these days – it’s never that cold on Halloween here.)  Peanut and Nugget were both allowed to wear their costumes to school, but only Peanut dressed up immediately.  Nugget’s costume involved a large tail, so he had to change once he was out of his car seat.  We headed over to the school and prepared for the festivities.  Halloween is a big deal in the lower classes at the kids’ school, and the room moms for each grade are responsible for putting on a party.  As one of the kindergarten class moms, I was busy with set-up for Peanut’s party.  We all collaborated on food and decorations, but the art project was my job.

We had each of the kids bring in a smallish pumpkin earlier in the week, and I set out sticky foam masks and felt capes (which I made while listening to my audiobook the night before) to turn the pumpkins into superheroes.  Each class in the school has a theme, and Peanut’s class is “the K Team,” with a superhero motif for the year.  The superhero pumpkins were a huge hit and the kids loved decorating them.

After I set up the art project, I slipped out of the classroom to enjoy the costume parade.  Preschool was first.  There’s my ferocious dinosaur!

Junior Kindergarten was next, followed by Kindergarten – Peanut brought up the rear, dressed as Violet from The Incredibles.  (No forcefields!)  Can you even handle her wig?!?! 

Apparently one of the preschoolers complained to the principal because there were no floats in the costume parade.  Lame!

After the parade, the kids returned to their classrooms for a special snack and Halloween party.  Food first!

While Peanut nibbled a muffin, Nugget was having an early Thanksgiving dinner over in the preschool classroom.  The guy heaps his plate.

After the food, we rolled out the art project.  Peanut adorned her pumpkin with a pink cape, red mask, and some colorfully decorated star stickers.  She was delighted with the result.

The costumes came off and the party wrapped up with a game of Halloween bingo.  I respectfully but emphatically declined to be the “caller” and instead hung out with Peanut and helped her fill in her bingo card.

With cleanup over, I rushed home to do a little work before picking the kids up early from school to get ready for the main event – trick-or-treating!

Ready to rock!

 

Every year, we go to a particular street in our neighborhood to trick-or-treat.  The street closes to traffic and becomes a massive block party, and it seems like half the town turns out.  The residents of the street get really into it – decorating their houses to the nines and pulling out all the stops on costumes.  There are huge, elaborate cauldrons heaped with candy, smoke machines, flashing lights, and families in coordinated costumes swarming all over.  We always run into school friends in the crowd, and it’s one of my favorite events of the year.

This year, we made plans to meet up with our friends who recently moved to the area from California.  Their baby – who was dressed as Jack-Jack Incredible to coordinate with my Violet – fell asleep in the car and missed the fun, but the three older kids had fun going door-to-door together.

(There’s that tail!)  It was a wild, crazy, and fun night – as always.  By the time we poured ourselves into bed, we had covered several blocks worth of ground, posed for pictures with a big group of friends, and collected bags full of candy – a good night indeed.

Happy (boo-lated) Halloween to all of you!  And now – onward to Thanksgiving!